A new Translation, with an Introduction, by Gregory Hays the modern library

Roman Empire describes the reign of Antoninus as
“furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed
little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and
misfortunes of mankind.” It furnishes equally little material
for Marcus’s biography. In the decade and a half between
145 and 161 we learn little of Marcus’s occupations, and our
only glimpses of his inner development come from his
correspondence with Fronto. But the two poles that would
govern the remainder of his life—the court and philosophy—
seem by this point to be fully established. There is no
evidence that Marcus experienced anything like the
“conversion” to philosophy that some ancient figures
experienced (or affected), but it is clear that by the middle to
late 140s philosophy was becoming increasingly central to
his life.
On August 31, 161, Antoninus died, leaving Marcus as his
sole successor. Marcus immediately acted to carry out what
appears to have been Hadrian’s original intention (perhaps
ignored by Antoninus) by pushing through the appointment of
his adopted brother, Lucius Verus, as co-regent. Verus’s
character has suffered by comparison with Marcus’s. Ancient

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sources, in particular the gossipy Historia Augusta, tend to
paint him as a self-indulgent degenerate—almost another
Nero. This may be unfair; it is certainly not the picture of him
we get from Marcus’s own reminiscences in the
Meditations. It does seem clear, however, that Marcus
functioned as the senior emperor in fact if not name. It would
be surprising if he had not. He was almost a decade older,
and had been trained for the position by Antoninus himself.
What kind of ruler did this philosopher-king prove to be?
Not, perhaps, as different from his predecessors as one might
have expected. Though an emperor was all-powerful in
theory, his ability to control policy was in reality much more
limited. Much of his time was spent fielding problems that
had moved up the administrative ladder: receiving embassies
from the large cities of the empire, trying appeals of criminal
cases, answering queries from provincial governors and
dealing with petitions from individuals. Even with a
functional system of imperial couriers, news could take
weeks to travel from the periphery of the empire to the
center; imperial edicts took time to move down the chain of
command. While the emperor’s decision had the force of
law, enforcement was almost entirely in the hands of
provincial governors, whose diligence might be affected by
incompetence, corruption, or an understandable desire not to
antagonize local elites.
We get occasional glimpses of Marcus’s day-to-day duties

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from the evidence of imperial decisions preserved in letters,
inscriptions and the legal codes. Surviving legislation shows
a certain interest in the freeing of slaves and in regulations
relating to the guardianship of orphans. Attempts have been
made to tie the first to Marcus’s philosophical convictions
and the second to his own memories of life without a father.
But it remains unclear how much of the policy is due to
Marcus himself, and how far it differs from that of Marcus’s
predecessor, Antoninus. Perhaps more interesting are the
traces of Marcus’s personality to be discerned in the
phrasing of imperial documents, where we find a scrupulous
attention to detail and a self-consciousness about linguistic
usage that seems to differentiate Marcus from his
predecessors. Neither trait surprises in the author of the
Meditations or a student of Fronto, whose extant letters
place great stress on the quest for the mot juste.
One of Marcus’s priorities was to preserve good relations
with the Senate. The goal was to disguise the absoluteness
with which the emperor ruled: to preserve a facade—and
sometimes, no doubt, even to achieve the reality—of
consensus and cooperation. A hundred years before,
aristocrats might have dreamed of a restored Republic (as
some certainly did). But by the second century it was clear
that there was no alternative to the principate. The Senate
expected deference in public and hoped for influence behind
the scenes; “good” emperors were willing to play along. In
cultivating the upper classes Marcus was following in the

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footsteps of Antoninus and Trajan, rather than of Hadrian,
whose relations with the Senate had been prickly. And it is
this, as much as anything else, that is responsible for his
reputation as a benevolent statesman. An emperor might do
as he liked while he lived, but it was the senatorial historians
—men like Cornelius Tacitus in the 120s or Cassius Dio in
the generation after Marcus’s death—who had the last word.
Another area where Marcus’s policy continued that of his
predecessors related to a small and eccentric sect known as
the Christians. In the course of the next century they would
become 
an 
increasing 
problem 
for 
the 
imperial
administration, and they were prominent enough in Marcus’s
day to attract an extended denunciation from a certain Celsus,